PAPER #3: RHETORICAL ANALYSIS DUE: 6 NOVEMBER 2008

English 101 with Professor Russell

ASSIGNMENT: Rhetoric is the use of language effectively and persuasively –– the way a writer, such as the ones we've read in class, structure their writing in such a way so as to achieve the intended purpose (to entertain, to relate an experience, to inform, or to persuade). For this paper, you will be objectively analyzing the rhetoric of a speech, either historical or contemporary.

STEP 1: THE SPEECH

Choose a speech that inspires or challenges you –– one which you feel is effective in fulfilling its purpose. This can be a speech from a politician, a writer, an artist, a comedian –– someone who's "someone" (i.e. do not choose the graduation speech from the Mainland Regional High School valedictorian) and someone who's real (so, not a speech from a movie character). You might consider the great speeches of American history –– those of Abraham Lincoln or John F. Kennedy, even FDR's "fireside chats" –– or something even more contemporary, such as a commencement address from Oprah Winfrey or Conan O'Brien. The site AmericanRhetoric.com has a fairly extensive database of speeches by famous Americans. If you search for something on Google, make sure that you are getting the "full text" version of the speech; also, please choose a speech that is no more than four or five pages in length at most.

STEP 2: THE ANALYSIS

Once you've found a piece of rhetoric you're excited about, it's time to make with the analysis –– and annotation[1]. Print out the speech and take your pen and/or highlighter to it. Mark the following:

· Think about diction (word choice), and circle or underline words you feel are especially well-chosen, words which are unusual or interesting, words meant to provoke or inspire or calm.

· What is the tone conveyed in the speech? –– that is, what is the mood, attitude, or feeling?

· Look at the structure of the sentences (the syntax): does the author rely on run-on sentences, on sentence fragments? –– are the sentences long or short or a happy combination?

· Is there intentional repetition of words or phrases?

· Is there parallel structure? (See page 449 in Pattern for a Purpose. Sometimes this could be considered the "rule of three" –– three items listed and in the same grammatical form, i.e. "skiing, surfing, hiking".)

· Identify any additional Rhetorical Devices used (see attached).

· Write your own additional comments in the margins. Underline or highlight lines that you like.

· Note where the author of the speech uses logos, pathos, and ethos.

STEP 3: THE PAPER

This paper, again, is a rhetorical analysis, an examination of the language and its effectiveness, not a critique or a review. Write in the third-person –– do not use the "I" pronoun. Do not agree or disagree with the speech: do not say that the speaker is "right" or "wrong". Instead, trace the progression of the speech from the beginning to the middle to the end, analyzing the work based on those questions you examined in Step 2. Your introduction paragraph should explain the occasion of the speech: who is the speaker, when is he or she speaking (what month, year), where was this speech delivered, and to whom? –– and, if important, what is the historical context (e.g. delivered during a time of war or economic depression)? Your thesis statement at the end of your first paragraph will be an answer to the following: What is the speaker trying to accomplish?

You will then spend the rest of your paper going through the speech, line by line at times, and always paragraph by paragraph, explaining how the speaker/speech achieves its intended purpose. Remember that you are looking at the language of the speech; it is not necessary to provide a "plot summary". You will be attaching a copy of your annotated ("marked up") speech to your analysis paper.

You should write in the active, present verb tense, using the third-person ("he/she/it") voice. Instead of writing "I/me" or "you", use "the audience". You should paraphrase and quote from the speech and indicate paragraph numbers when appropriate.

EXAMPLE:

Russell 1

Richard Russell

Prof. Russell

English 101

6 November 2008

A Rhetorical Analysis of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address[2]

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address was delivered at the dedication of the national cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, in November 1863, four months after the Battle of Gettysburg. The Battle of Gettysburg, the bloodiest of the Civil War, is now considered to have been the turning point of the war: this was the end of Confederate General Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North. Gettysburg was also, though, the final resting place for more than 7,500 American soldiers of both sides. Ostensibly then, in this speech, Lincoln serves to dedicate the land. But in just two hundred and seventy-two words, Lincoln also manages to re-dedicate the entire nation and its people to the cause of abolishing slavery and ensuring the founding fathers' ideals of life and liberty.

In the famous opening, Lincoln's Address begins, "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" (par. 1). Immediately, Lincoln seeks to remind the present of the past: to encourage the audience to trust that the war was not just his war, not just their war, but also the war of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson. Lincoln's use of the term "score" maybe seems significant: it is a mostly Biblical term meaning "twenty years". Here, from the beginning, Lincoln seems to insists that the abolition of slavery is not just financial or social but also a moral imperative –– one which we know from history the "fathers" failed to commit to. The use of the term "Liberty" further echoes the sentiments of both the Declaration of Independence and the preamble to the Constitution.

In paragraph two, Lincoln mentions the official motive for his appearance: "come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place" (par. 2). Still, he begins the second paragraph asking an almost existential question: will the nation endure? He uses "we" in each of the four sentences of this paragraph, to insist that it is not just he who is engaged in this crisis, but indeed all Americans: "[W]e are engaged… We are met… We have come… It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this" (par. 2).

And so on.

REQUIREMENTS: This paper should be typed, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, in 12-point, Times New Roman font. Be sure to include a proper heading (your name, my name, the course, the date) and header (your last name and the page number). Your paper should have a dynamic title (that is, something other than "Paper #3"; the title can be as simple as "A Rhetorical Analysis of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address"). Do not include a cover page. Your finished work should be 3–4 pages in length. In addition to your paper, please also attach a copy of the speech you have analyzed, which should be annotated by you.

DEADLINE: This paper is due in class on Thursday, November 6, 2008. If you are not in class, you will be expected to e-mail your paper in MS Word format (.doc) to me at rar239@nyu.edu or rrussell@atlantic.edu before 11 A.M. on 11/06/08. (Late papers lose points.)

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RHETORICAL DEVICES (AND FIGURATIVE LANGUAGE): A VERY BRIEF OVERVIEW

Alliteration –– repetition of an initial consonant sound.

"You'll never put a better bit of butter on your knife" –Country Life butter advertising campaign

Anaphora –– repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.

"We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender." –Winston Churchill

Antithesis –– the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.

"We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools." –Martin Luther King, Jr.

Apostrophe –– breaking off discourse to address some absent person or thing, some abstract quality, an inanimate object, or a nonexistent character. "Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art." –John Keats

Assonance –– identity or similarity in sound between internal vowels in neighboring words.

"The spider skins lie on their sides, translucent and ragged, their legs drying in knots." –Annie Dillard

Chiasmus –– a verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed. "Ask not what your country can do for you –– ask what you can do for your country." –JFK

Euphemism –– the substitution of an inoffensive term for one considered offensively explicit.

"Wardrobe malfunction." –Justin Timberlake's description of his tearing of Janet Jackson's costume during a half-time performance at the Super Bowl

Hyperbole –– an extravagant statement; the use of exaggerated terms for the purpose of emphasis or heightened effect. "Ladies and gentlemen, I've been to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than all of them put together." –Kent Brockman, The Simpsons

Irony –– the use of words to convey the opposite of their literal meaning. A statement or situation where the meaning is contradicted by the appearance or presentation of the idea.

"It is a fitting irony that under Richard Nixon, launder became a dirty word." –William Zinsser

Litotes –– a figure of speech consisting of an understatement in which an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite. "We are not amused." –Queen Victoria

Metaphor –– an implied comparison between two unlike things that actually have something important in common. "Language is a road map of a culture. It tells you where its people come from and where they are going." –Rita Mae Brown

Metonymy –– a figure of speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for another with which it is closely associated; also, the rhetorical strategy of describing something indirectly by referring to things around it.

"The suits on Wall Street walked off with most of our savings." (Not "the suits", of course, but the men wearing the suits.)

Onomatopoeia –– the formation or use of words that imitate the sounds associated with the objects or actions they refer to. "One of these days, Alice. Pow! Right in the kisser!" –Jackie Gleason, The Honeymooners

Oxymoron –– a figure of speech in which incongruous or contradictory terms appear side by side. Consider the expressions "act naturally," "original copy," "found missing," "alone together," "peace force," "definite possibility," "terribly pleased," "real phony," "ill health," "turn up missing," "jumbo shrimp," "alone together," "loose tights," "small crowd," and "clearly misunderstood"

Paradox –– a statement that appears to contradict itself.

"The swiftest traveler is he that goes afoot." –Henry David Thoreau, Walden

Personification –– a figure of speech in which an inanimate object or abstraction is endowed with human qualities or abilities. "Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered. There was no one there." –English proverb

Pun –– a play on words, sometimes on different senses of the same word and sometimes on the similar sense or sound of different words. Example: A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead possums. The flight attendant looks at him and says, "I'm sorry, sir, only one carrion[3] allowed per passenger."

Simile –– a stated comparison (usually formed with "like" or "as") between two fundamentally dissimilar things that have certain qualities in common. "Life is like an onion: You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep." –Carl Sandburg

Synechdoche –– a figure of speech is which a part is used to represent the whole, the whole for a part, the specific for the general, the general for the specific, or the material for the thing made from it.

"All hands on deck." (Obviously the sailors and their hands.)

Understatement –– a figure of speech in which a writer or a speaker deliberately makes a situation seem less important or serious than it is. "It's just a flesh wound." –Black Knight, after having both of his arms cut off, in Monty Python and the Holy Grail

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[1] The adding of critical notes to a text, i.e. your comments scribbled on top of and in the margins of the speech.

[2] Do not choose the Gettysburg Address. Also, do not choose the two presidential candidates acceptance speeches from the conventions, printed in this packet. You can, of course, choose any other speech made by Lincoln or any other speech from Obama or McCain.

[3] dead animal